Tooth Extraction

On Tuesday, I started having some pain and then swelling in one of my molars. The swelling progressed so fast that I made a dentist appointment for yesterday morning. When I went in, the dentist said they had to remove the tooth immediately to get the infection taken care of. I was super nervous for obvious reasons! I was also nervous because I was worried about still being able to nurse while recovering. Thankfully, Heavenly Father answers prayers because, in spite of hardly being able to eat anything, I've still been able to breastfeed. Such a blessing.

The extraction was a really hard one the dentist said because the tooth was so brittle and she had to pound and pound and pound to get the tooth out. She prescribed me pain medication, but I worried about taking it and it affecting Harrison by making him lethargic. I decided not to take it and just use ibuprofen instead. Sure, it's painful and uncomfortable, but I'd rather deal with that than cause a problem for me or Harrison!
In other news, my son was a little angel yesterday after the extraction. In fact, he was probably the best he's ever been in his short life! Love this guy who is 6.5 weeks old and already getting so big!

Smiles & Chats

This little sweet guy is just talking and smiling at his mom. Melts my heart, especially after being gone most of the day at teacher meetings and preparing my classroom!

Project Baby: 6 Weeks Old & a Surgery

For some reason, I thought that life with a newborn would get easier at 6 weeks. I have always heard people say that if you can make it through the first 6 weeks after birth, you can make it through anything. While part of this is true, it doesn’t account for the fact that life after 6 weeks old still is different. It still is rough.

I guess my experience has been different than most people’s experiences. I feel like if he wouldn’t have been jaundiced and would have started gaining weight sooner, he would have been on a schedule by now. In fact, I’m sure of it. It wasn’t until he was 3 weeks old that he started getting above his birth weight and before that I was pumping milk for 2 weeks and supplementing his milk with an ounce nearly every feeding for a little over a week. He finally started doing better and getting on a better schedule and then this week, he got circumcised and that through everything out the window!

While he did really well at the circumcision (didn’t cry only squirmed around a little bit… such a good boy!), he was antsy and irritated afterwards. We gave him baby Tylenol 3-4 times, which I think upset his tummy a little bit. I was worried about not holding him and rocking him to sleep for naps in case him crying was out of pain rather than tiredness. All of the sleep “training” we had done went out the window.

On top of that, by the end of the week, little Harrison started getting SUPER fussy because of being gassy. I felt so bad for the kid, but I also felt bad for myself. Friday and Saturday I broke down and cried a few times. Okay, Saturday I cried a lot- probably off and on for an hour and a half. It is so hard to hold a screaming baby and try EVERYTHING to calm that baby down and nothing will work. He didn’t burp for 2 days and had so much air trapped in his intestines. I could hear his little tummy rumbling and knew what the problem was, but couldn’t do anything about it. One of my coworkers came and brought me simethicone drops for his tummy. Not even that worked! He couldn’t sleep without me holding and rocking him because his tummy bugged him when I laid him down flat. I felt like I couldn’t get ANYTHING done, including feed myself, a problem for a nursing mother who will lose her milk supply if she doesn’t eat!

Honestly, last Friday & Saturday felt like the worst days of my life. Sunday, he started to feel a little better! YAY!

Don’t get me wrong, I love my sweet boy. When he looks in my eyes, my heart melts. He is a little angel and I know that him crying isn’t his fault. He is in pain and struggling. It doesn’t, however, make the crying any less frustrating knowing all of this. I am so grateful for a husband who is supportive of me when I’m going through these struggles!

Week 6 News:

• As mentioned, Harrison was circumcised this week and was a little trooper!
• Harrison started smiling at me so much this week. In the middle of the night, he smiled and cooed at me… it melted my heart! We have been having little chats and smiles. Love it! I love his sweet little voice.
• Harrison started finding his hands this week. He keeps putting his right hand up to his mouth and trying to suck on it. This kid LOVES to suck! He will nurse for 20 minutes on each side each time I nurse him. Once he’s done, he then wants his Schnuli. It cracks me up! Thankfully, he spits it out if he’s falling asleep. Glad he doesn’t need/want it all the time and that he doesn’t use it to sleep.
• Harrison went to church for the first time this Sunday, on his 6 week birthday. He slept through the first mostly 2 hours. I missed all of Relief Society and part of Sunday School because I was nursing/changing/burping him. Honestly, I realize that this is going to be my life at church now!

One of my favorite things is how cute Harrison looks when his dad burps him. His little face looks SO adorable! I don't get to see this view of his face unless Evan is burping him. It makes me so happy.

Love this cute look on his face! :)

Our little swaddled guy. Love his crazy hair! :)

Sometimes when we change him, he does THIS right after. Love the look on his face in this one. He looks so concerned. He will thank me later for NOT posting the picture that showed his business on my blog. He probably won't thank me for posting a picture of him sitting in his own poop, though!

Love this adorable face! I just want to kiss him, he's so cute! His jammies say "I love HUGS." They should say, "I look so cute in these jammies that my mommy wants to kiss me."

Full body jammie shot

Had a better picture of this, but chose to post this one instead... he was kicking his leg so fast I could hardly get the picture without his leg being blurry. I just loved the one his little legs looked in these jammies, so I had to get a picture! These are 3 month jammies, by the way. Last time I checked, my baby is only 1 month old and, as you can clearly see, filling these jammies out. He is a big, heavy guy!

I couldn't help myself... ANOTHER adorable shot of his dad burping him on his shoulder. Love seeing these two together!

OUTTAKE

What Harrison REALLY looked like when we were trying to get his 6 week picture:

Milk

I got this picture in a text from Evan today with the caption "milk" while I was at a work meeting. That was all I needed to see to know I needed to get home!

Project Baby: 5 Weeks & a 1 Month Birthday

Harrison turned one month old on Wednesday! It’s hard to believe a month has gone by while at the same time it feels like Harrison has been with us forever! The past month has honestly been the hardest time of my life. I had prepped myself for that. I knew it would be. I think the hardest part, the part I wasn’t prepared for, was recovering from giving birth. I wish I would have mentally prepared myself for that. I guess having a fast labor means you have a slower recovery and it’s totally true! I thought I’d be hiking and running by the next weekend. Boy, was I wrong! 5 weeks out and I’m still not fully recovered from giving birth. Although I’m back to my pre-birth weight on the scale, my muscles are not where they used to be. My pants are still a little too tight and getting out to exercise isn’t as easy as I thought it might be to do. I didn’t know this is how it would be. I am so grateful for my faith in God. I pray all of the time to have strength and patience. I pray for my child to sleep when I'm exhausted. I pray to know how to comfort my sweet boy when he cries out of pain, frustration, or exhaustion. Being a parent is definitely hard work, but worth  it.


In spite of all that, I’m so grateful for my little sweet son. He is an angel. Sometimes I hold him close and just look into his eyes and I can’t help but shed tears of joy for being given such a precious gift to be a mother to this precious son. I am truly blessed. Realizing this definitely makes those hard times bearable knowing that I will eventually recover. It makes it a lot easier to look at my new “mom” body knowing that I get to have this precious boy because of it. Life goes on and I go with it.

Week 5 thoughts:

• I forgot to mention last week, but this little guy sometimes “sleeps” with one eye open (or sometimes they’re in slits). I use the term sleeps loosely because when either one of his eyes I partially open, it means he’s not fully asleep yet! It cracks me up seeing his little eye peeking open when I know he’s mostly asleep.
• Another thing I forgot to mention is that Harrison hiccups usually every day. He definitely gets this from me! I hiccup all the time and have my whole life ( even when I was in the womb). It kills me when he hiccups because I feel his pain. I HATE hiccupping! He seems to be fine with it, though. Last week, he actually fell asleep hiccupping and stayed asleep. Awesome.
• At his one month appointment with the midwife, Harrison weighed in at 10 lbs. exactly! So glad he is gaining weight and doing so well!
• He has gotten SO good at following people’s movements and even better at making eye contact. This week, he brought tears to my eyes. I was nursing him at 3am. In between switching sides, I was talking to him and smiling at him. He looked up at me and gave me a HUGE smile. It melted my heart. He is such a sweet, little boy!
• He was able to hold up his head at birth, but has only gotten better at doing it! He especially is good at holding his head up when we burp him. Sometimes a little too good when I nurse him, because he'll kick his head back and push against me with his arms when he's trying to re-latch on if he comes off. This little guy is strong!
• I mentioned last week that our sweet son started to get himself on a schedule of eating every 3 hours. On top of that, he was not using breastfeeding to get himself to sleep- he would eat, be awake, and then go back to sleep only to wake up again and start the cycle. He was sleeping for 5 hours in the night before waking up to eat again. I started feeling like I could get things done around the house during his nap times and feeling less exhausted. He was doing SO well for about 5-6 days. Then on about Wednesday of last week (which, we realized, coincided with me reading BabyWise), his schedule started getting all messed up. He wouldn’t go back to bed for long after his 3am feeding like he normally does. He wasn’t sleeping after being awake. He was fussy and nursing and then falling asleep. I felt so frustrated. Friday I just started crying and had a really rough day. On that day, it really felt like the worst day of my life. I know that’s dramatic, but exhausted/frustrated me felt that way! Evan all of a sudden had an epiphany, though. He realized that we were trying to get him to go to sleep on his own without rocking him because I read BabyWise. This coincided with him getting off the good schedule he had been on. We realized that it is just too much to let him cry himself to sleep at this age! As soon as we had this realization, I felt less stressed and he started getting back on a schedule again. Hopefully, we can get this to continue!

Love these little newborn "bear" bum jammies from Darcy!

 Anyone else thinks it's funny that my newborn was born with a double chin?

Giving my sweet boy kisses

1 month onesie from his Aunt Holly!

The angle of his head looks funny here, but I wanted to show a full body shot... oh, and notice how he's doing the archer pose? I'm telling you, it's his third favorite thing to do. The first being nursing, the second is grabbing.

My sleeping babe

His dad holding him

Love this striped sweatshirt!

I love how cute he looks when his dad burps him!

The first picture I took was too light. By the time I changed the settings and went to take this picture, he started crying! Poor guy!

After having him weighed on his one month birthday, we went on a little family walk around Kanasket-Palmer State Park since I'd never been there before. Not much of a place to walk, but fun in the summer with the river right there and secluded picnic tables and BBQs everywhere! Definitely want to go back and have a BBQ and swim.

Sleeping Babes

Evan took this self portrait of Evan and sent it to me today with the caption: Me pretending to be sleeping. Harrison is not pretending. Ha! Love these boys!

Project Baby: 4 Weeks Old

(LOVE both of these pictures so much! Doesn't his little face look adorable?!)

Week 4 Thoughts:

• First thing before I forget- Harrison’s dad summited Mt. Rainier this Saturday for his third time! Evan said he was thinking of Harrison and I the whole time and can't wait when we can go up as a family. We were thinking of him too. So proud of him!
• It’s hard to believe our baby is already 4 weeks old! I feel like his look changes just a little bit every day and he gets cuter and cuter every day!
• He got a new “Schnuli” (pacifier) this week from my friend, Amy. She noticed when she was helping me while Evan was on Mt. Rainier that Harrison just wants to suck to be happy. I didn’t like the other Schnulis we had because they were encouraging to nurse incorrectly. Amy watched him for me Saturday morning so I could take a nap and she noticed he just wanted to suck, which is why he was crying. After I woke up, she went and got him new Schnulis and he loves them.
• He has been SO alert this week. In fact, people keep commenting on how alert of a baby he is. He just wants to look around and observe the world. I love it! I love his adorable eyes and my heart melts when he looks at me. He is getting even better at making eye contact and will switch from looking at me when I’m talking to looking at Evan when he hears him talk.
• This kid is seriously SO STRONG! His kicks and punches are incredible. It’s hard to keep him latched on when nursing sometimes if he gets fussy because he kicks and will push his hands against me and arch his head back. I am a decently strong person and I find it hard to keep him nursing when he does this because of how strong he is.
• He is such a grabber! He has started reaching back and grabbing his hair while he’s nursing. It’s so cute. I also love how he puts both hands on my chest when he nurses too. Love those sweet hands.
• Sometimes he puts his fists up to my chest when nursing. He looks so adorable when he does that!
• FINALLY, this week he got past his birth weight. As of last Sunday, he weighed 9 lbs. 7 oz. which meant I could stop pumping and just breastfeed him. YAY! My nipples are thanking me that I don’t have to pump after nearly every feeding. It was a struggle the beginning of this week feeling like I was starting all over again with nursing and trying to get him on a better schedule. However, by the end of the week, he was putting himself on a nursing every 2-3 hour schedule with being awake after nursing and short naps before he woke up to nurse again! So grateful. I can’t imagine how much better he’d be if he hadn’t have been jaundiced. He honestly would sleep through the night if I let him. When I wake up after 2-3 hours, I wake him up to nurse him. Can’t wait until he gets a little bit older and I can just let him sleep through the night!
• I left the house for the first time with the baby ALONE on Saturday. Sure, it was just to drive over to my sister’s house 5 minutes away, but I had to work up the courage to do it. He screamed for the first minute or two and then fell asleep. I guess it gave me courage that I can leave the house alone with the baby again.
• Evan likes giving little Harrison tummy time when he can. I never do it, but the doctor said we should start!

Squishy face

Evan took a few newborn shots, but never finished the photo shoot because the lighting was terrible. Can you see how his little bum is angled in the air and his legs are straight? Funny guy.

Tummy time with daddy 

The archer's pose... I guess this is a sign of cognitive development. He does this all the time so he must be a genius. :)

Love that spiky hair!

Meeting his new friend, Mason

Love how cute he looks sleeping!

Post hair wash... his hair gets so puffy

My two sleepy guys! Evan woke up (obviously) when I took this picture. Evan was exhausted here because he had just climbed Mt. Rainier the day before.

Look at his cute, little hand grabbing his hair while nursing. So adorable.

His new Schnuli. When he cuddles with me, he likes to put his fists up like that. Love this little guy!

Some things I don’t want to forget from the last 4 weeks:

• Sometimes he makes little goat noises… I don’t know how else to describe it other than it sounds like a lamb bleating. Yes, I said bleating. That is a real word. Look it up. He does this usually when he wants to nurse and is about to latch or comes off of latching and needs to get back on. His little noises make me crack up!
• When he cries, he sometimes sounds like a little kitty cat. Love those sweet little noises.
• It’s amazing how he KNOWS when I’m holding him. He will be crying with someone else and when I take him, he stops crying. I don’t even have to speak, but he knows my touch and knows that I am holding him. It makes me feel special to hold this sweet, little angel.
• When I asked Evan what he wanted to remember, he said, “I like his spiky hair.” When prompted for more, he said, “I like when he sleeps and he cuddles with me. I like how he grabs my finger and squeezes really tight. I like how his jammies aren’t quite the right size for him.” We both love our son so much and feel so grateful to have him in our lives!

Project Baby: 3 Weeks Old & Tales of Breastfeeding

Week 3:

• Little Harrison is getting better and better at making eye contact. It’s amazing how much his eyes will follow when Evan or speak to him and then move away.
• This week Harrison cooed a couple times in response to us talking to him. It was so adorable watching him try to talk back.
• He has started to be more and more awake this week during the day time. He usually wants to be held, but will go in a bouncy, reclining “chair” for a while. I actually got to make a QUICK dinner and do the dishes the other day! YAY!
• Harrison’s baby acne started up this week. It isn’t super bad, but he started to get little pimples, mostly on his chin probably from breastfeeding.
• I forgot to mention this last week, but he started trying to roll over last week and has continued it into this week as well. He will roll onto his side and stay there for a while.
• He has the STRONGEST grip! He tries to grab my breast with both hands when he’s trying to latch on. He obviously is not coordinated enough yet to help himself latch on with his hands, but he is trying to do it!
• He already is grabbing my hair when he nurses. And he usually rests both of his hands on my chest when he nurses too. It’s the cutest little thing. Love this little guy!

First time wearing pants

Love that cute face... and the fact that he's always wriggling out of his swaddle. He LOVES to be swaddled and calms down almost immediately when swaddled, but also loves wriggling out of it too. :)

I have so many pictures of these two sleeping side by side while I'm the only one awake. :)

Love those sweet hands... they look just like my mom's (but cute baby boy version)

First time laying on the Boppy pillow after nursing. He looks so scrunched up and cute. Don't worry... I moved him right after I took the picture! I was so worried that he wasn't getting enough air and that he'd fall over.

Evan and I took Harrison on his second walk last Thursday. We got out the Mobi wrap that a coworker gave me. Evan carried him the whole time and I freaked out the whole time that he wasn't getting enough air. Love that little hand sticking out.

We started giving him baths in the bathtub. I get in and hold his head with one hand and bum with the other hand. Evan washes his hair and puts water on him. He LOVES being in the water! He calms down immediately when we put him in and will just relax. He could just stay in there forever!

Nursing Struggles:

It’s hard to believe that only 3 weeks have gone by! Sometimes it feels like the not sleeping thing has lasted forever. I am SO grateful for a supportive husband and father who will do anything to make sure that I and the baby are comfortable and happy. In fact, if it wasn’t for his support, I would have given up on breastfeeding within the first week of little Harrison’s birth. If not then, then I surely would have given up this week.

You see, as I mentioned a while back, Harrison had some jaundice when he was born. This wasn’t really much of a problem until the Saturday after he was born. Whereas the day before he was nursing like a champ, Friday night/Saturday morning, he started becoming lethargic and not nursing as well. That combined with the fact that he hadn’t pooped since early Wednesday morning made the midwife (and, on Monday, his doctor) concerned. (Pooping is what gets rid of jaundice.) Sunday night when he was one week old and hadn’t started gaining back the weight he lost AND he still hadn’t pooped, the midwife suggested that we supplement my breast milk with others’ breast milk.

Basically, he was on a vicious cycle. Because he was lethargic from the jaundice, he wasn’t nursing as much. Because he wasn’t nursing as much, he wasn’t getting enough calories. Because he wasn’t getting enough calories, he wasn’t pooping. All this also meant that my milk supply wasn’t going to increase either. It was decided that I should supplement my breast milk after feeding during the day. Each time after nursing, I had to pump my milk. Then, we’d feed him the pumped milk with an ounce of donated milk. It pretty much meant that I was nursing and pumping pretty much all the TIME! Thankfully, Evan’s sister gave us 30 ounces and my sisters both pumped for me a few times so that we had breast milk to supplement him with. As I mentioned before, feeding him a bottle of someone else’s milk for the first time made me cry.

Well, thankfully, the supplemented breast milk helped him to get back to his birth weight! We only supplemented him for a week and a half and I pumped for about 2 weeks nearly every time after I nursed him. Honestly, I felt like I couldn’t leave the house, get dressed, or even make food. It was so difficult to nurse and then pump. Evan is awesome and has made literally fed me sometimes all three meals of the day as I’ve been nursing and pumping. I couldn’t have done it without him. If I wasn’t nursing, Evan would help me burp or hold the baby so I could pump and sleep or shower if there was time. So grateful for him!

As of his 3 week birthday, he FINALLY had exceeded his birth weight. (He weighed 9 lbs. 7 oz.) Unfortunately, feeding a few times of day with a bottle made him a lazy breastfeeder.

A little before his 2 week birthday, I was feeling pretty good about breastfeeding. My nipple pain was pretty much non-existent and he was doing really well with breastfeeding, even latching on by himself most times. It was awesome. However, around his 2 week birthday, he started latching funny. I didn’t realize it then, but he was trying to breastfeed like he was sucking on a bottle AND IT HURT. I didn’t know what was going wrong, but I just thought I should grin and bear it. For a week, EVERY time I nursed him, there was CONSTANT stabbing pain.  And then I had to pump after breastfeeding, which would amplify the pain even more. Sunday morning (his 3 week birthday), I broke down and sobbed. I was loathing breastfeeding because of the pain. Every time I had to feed him, I was literally staring at the clock just counting down the minutes to make sure he got a good feeding and then I’d take him off because the pain was so bad. Every time he latched on, I’d scream out in pain it hurt so badly. I thought about getting a pencil to bite on as he nursed to help me deal with the pain and to keep from crying out. I told Evan Sunday that I didn’t think I could do it anymore and that I was thinking about giving up.

Evan is such a big support to me. He gave me a priesthood blessing and called the midwife for me asking if we could not only come get him weighed again, but if she could help me with breastfeeding. She did help me figure out what was going wrong and helped him to latch better. Since he’s now over birth weight, I no longer have to pump anymore. YAY!

As of now, nursing isn’t as painful and my nipples are getting back to where they were before the week of painful latching! So grateful for Evan’s help and for the midwife who is willing to guide me through this process. It’s been a rough last few weeks, but I’m hopeful it will get better and that I’ll soon start doing more than just breastfeeding and trying to nap! :)